Ships at Work

By Mary Elting

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Ships at Work" by Mary Elting. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547127307

Book preview

Mary Elting

Ships at Work

EAN 8596547127307

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

SHIPS AND MEN

STANDING WATCH

SEA LANGUAGE

OTHER JOBS

SEATRAINS

BANANA BOATS

THAR SHE BLOWS

DRYDOCK

TUGS

GREAT LAKES SHIPS

AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIPS

FISHING VESSELS

THE UNITED STATES

OTHER PASSENGER SHIPS

FIREBOATS AND OTHER HELPERS

CHARTS FOR SAFETY

WHAT SEAMEN SAY

INDEX

SHIPS AND MEN

Table of Contents

A ship is a marvellous thing. It took ships—and the men who sail them—to circle the world and tie it all together into one round ball. Brave seamen from a thousand ports have faced storms and unknown dangers, first to make the world a bigger place for people to live in, then to bring all people close together.

No matter how dangerous the voyage nor what she carries, a ship is always she to a seagoing man. He never calls a freighter or a tanker or any large vessel a boat. Only shoreside people who have never been to sea make the mistake of calling a ship a boat. And shoreside people never know the excitement and fun—and the long, hard work—that the skillful men of the sea know every day of their lives.

STANDING WATCH

Table of Contents

Jim is a sailor on a freighter carrying cargo across the Atlantic Ocean. Every morning at half-past three, someone comes into the forecastle. That’s the seamen’s name for their sleeping quarters. They pronounce it foke-sull.

Jim mumbles a little. Then the light goes on. The sailor who has waked him wants to be sure he doesn’t go back to sleep. With half-open eyes, Jim sees his clothes hanging from hooks. Back and forth they sway as the ship pitches and rolls. Jim is so used to sleeping in rough weather that he hadn’t even noticed when a storm blew up in the night.

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Now he’s wide awake, and so are the other men in the forecastle. Jim swings his legs over the side of his bunk, in a hurry to get dressed in well-washed blue dungarees, a turtleneck sweater instead of a shirt, thick socks and a heavy woolen pea coat. That’s a sailor’s winter jacket with pockets that slant in sideways. He makes sure his sharp knife is dangling from a snap on his belt. No telling when it might come in handy. Then he sticks a knitted blue stocking cap on his head and reaches for his fleece-lined mittens.

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Jim wants to be warm. He knows the wind will be sharp, even though his ship is headed for the warm Mediterranean Sea. It’s wintertime and still cold out on the Atlantic Ocean.

Jim and the three men who share his bunkroom are ready for work—almost ready. First they go down the passageway to the mess, which is their word for dining room. There they have coffee from a big steaming urn that is always kept full and hot. In another minute Jim steps out onto the leeward side of the deck—the side away from the wind. Although he’s in a hurry, he waits there sheltered from the wind for a few minutes while his eyes get used to the dark. Jim is going to stand his watch. That means he will work for four hours.

Jim is an AB—an Able Bodied Seaman. An AB works out on deck instead of down inside the ship in the engine room or in the kitchen, which he calls the galley. All the men who work on a ship are seamen. Only deckhands are called sailors. And only those sailors who have passed examinations and have been at sea for a certain length of time are AB’s. The other sailors are called ordinary seamen or ordinaries for short.

As soon as his eyes can see in the dark, Jim walks toward the bow which is the front of the ship. As the deck rises and falls and tilts under his feet, he manages from long practice, to keep his balance, but he also slides one hand along the rail on top of the bulwark, a kind of low wall that runs all around the